Sandra Harris Writes

COVID-19, FIVE YEARS ON. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Was it really five years ago today that our government announced the closure of all schools for two weeks because a virus called COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, had travelled here from China? It was better to be safe than sorry, we were told, little knowing that the two weeks off school would turn into five and a half months and that those months in lockdown would turn out to be some of the strangest and most surreal and bizarre we’d ever experienced as a country.   I remember where I was when the school closures were announced. In a record shop, looking at CDs. I was convinced, I suppose, like many other people, that it would be a storm in a teacup and over before we knew it. Boy, was my face red. The school closure thing turned out to be a blessing in disguise. My son, still coming to terms with an autism diagnosis, wasn’t having an easy time of it in school and the break was a huge relief to both himself and myself....

  COFFEE-SHOP CONVERSATIONS. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I met a total stranger in a coffee-shop yesterday, as you do, and, as we were the only two people in the place besides the staff, we chatted for well over an hour about… guess what? That’s right, the pandemic, lol. Shure, what else do Irish people have to talk about these days besides the blessed pandemic, unless it’s climate change, which is making our Irish weather even more unpredictable lately, or giving out about England for causing Brexit, which is causing our package deliveries from the UK to be delayed because the stuff we’ve ordered is all sitting in containers at Customs or on lorries somewhere in Eng-er-land? Ahem. No offence, Britain…! The pandemic, Brexit and climate change-slash-the weather, that’s all we Irish have to talk about nowadays. Isn’t it shocking? Still, at least we haven’t yet lost the art of conversation, as evidenced by my lovely chat with Maura yesterday. She told me how she’d come into the area...